🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <TQAbC.82275$Os2.30629@fx01.am4>,
AndyW  <An...@nojunqmail.com> wrote:
>If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a bit 
>of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.

I used Primes when a student & working at uni.

>http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html

Oddly enough I have absoltuely no interest in connecting in to one
ever again as long as I live. I have no feelings other than hatred
towards them. This is possibly (probably) due to the politics
and people surrounding them at the establishment I worked for.

Gordon

On 29/01/2018 14:23, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> In article <TQAbC.82275$Os2.30629@fx01.am4>,
> AndyW  <An...@nojunqmail.com> wrote:
>> If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a bit
>> of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.
> 
> I used Primes when a student & working at uni.
> 
>> http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html
> 
> Oddly enough I have absoltuely no interest in connecting in to one
> ever again as long as I live. I have no feelings other than hatred
> towards them. This is possibly (probably) due to the politics
> and people surrounding them at the establishment I worked for.

I tried it.
It is just as awful as the first time I used it. Thankfully PCs were 
coming in at the time and we switched to them after a couple of years 
with the prime.... sorry Pr1me, must remember the '1'
I do recall that their security was appalling and it was an easy matter 
to go 'Up' and 'LD' to find the lecturers' directories and then 'Down' 
to a directory to get the lesson plans and assignments.

Andy

On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 1:22:13 AM UTC-7, AndyW wrote:
> If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a bit 
> of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.

> http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html

I've never used one, but I did see the manuals on Bitsavers. I think it was an 
interesting system.

John Savard

In article <B5HbC.402423$q8.107507@fx07.am4>,
AndyW  <An...@nojunqmail.com> wrote:
>On 29/01/2018 14:23, Gordon Henderson wrote:
>> In article <TQAbC.82275$Os2.30629@fx01.am4>,
>> AndyW  <An...@nojunqmail.com> wrote:
>>> If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a bit
>>> of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.
>> 
>> I used Primes when a student & working at uni.
>> 
>>> http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html
>> 
>> Oddly enough I have absoltuely no interest in connecting in to one
>> ever again as long as I live. I have no feelings other than hatred
>> towards them. This is possibly (probably) due to the politics
>> and people surrounding them at the establishment I worked for.
>
>I tried it.
>It is just as awful as the first time I used it. Thankfully PCs were 
>coming in at the time and we switched to them after a couple of years 
>with the prime.... sorry Pr1me, must remember the '1'
>I do recall that their security was appalling and it was an easy matter 
>to go 'Up' and 'LD' to find the lecturers' directories and then 'Down' 
>to a directory to get the lesson plans and assignments.

I remember hitting the break key on the asr33 (yea, 1979/80 and we had
asr33's) some 72 times and it dropping into some weird supervisor mode.
I think they fixed that at Prim0s 19, but by then I'd moved on to better
things (the BBC Micros were faster!)

Gordon

AndyW <An...@nojunqmail.com> writes:
> I tried it.
> It is just as awful as the first time I used it. Thankfully PCs were
> coming in at the time and we switched to them after a couple of years
> with the prime.... sorry Pr1me, must remember the '1'
> I do recall that their security was appalling and it was an easy
> matter to go 'Up' and 'LD' to find the lecturers' directories and then
> 'Down' to a directory to get the lesson plans and assignments.

with failure of FS and the mad rush to get products back into product
pipelines ... 3033, 3081 (and 370/xa) was kicked off in parallel.
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

370/xa design/architecture documents were eventually known as "811" for
their nov1978 publication date.

POK also managed to convince corporate to kill vm/370 product and
transfer the (burlington mall, had originally been on 3rd flr 545tech
sq, taking over the IBM Boston Program Center space, before moving out
to vacant IBM SBC bldg at burlington mall) development group to POK to
work on MVS/XA (claiming that otherwise they wouldn't be able to make
MVS/XA ship date). They weren't going to inform the group until just
before the move ... to minimize people that might escape. There was a
leak and numerous people manage to escape in the rt128 vacinity. A lot
went to DEC ... this was late 76, early 77 ... so they would have been
there for early 11/780 work ... introduced oct1977
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX-11

however, some went to Prime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRIMOS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRIMOS#Internals

The unusual choice of FORTRAN for the OS programming language had to do
with the people who founded Prime. They had worked for Honeywell on a
NASA project.[9] FORTRAN was the language they had used both at NASA
and, for many of them, at MIT.

Since Prime's hardware did not perform byte addressing, there was no
impetus to create a C compiler. Late models of the hardware were
eventually modified to support I-mode, and programs compiled in C.

Later, around version 18, a version of PL/1, called PL/P, became the
high level language of choice within PRIMOS, and the PL/P and Modula-2
languages were used in the Kernel. Furthermore, some new PRIMOS
utilities were written in SP/L, which was similar to PL/P.

... snip ...

trivia: tech sq. was two story polaroid bldg facing the street. 545 tech
sq with science center, project mac (multics) etc. was on one side
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545
and
http://www.multicians.org/multics.html

identical bldg. on the opposite side (from 545) included MIT Urban
system lab with CP67/CMS datacenter ... story about USL
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html

NASA was the fourth side of the sq (on backside across from Polaroid
bldg.) ...  more about tech sq.
http://news.mit.edu/2004/techsquare-0317
and
http://multicians.org/tech-square.html
above mentions one of the Prime founders was there at Honeywell
& NASA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Poduska

posts mentioning FS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

other trivia, Endicott eventually acquired the VM370 product mission
... but had to reconstitute a development group from scratch.

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:23:46 -0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson
<gordon...@drogon.net> wrote:

>In article <TQAbC.82275$Os2.30629@fx01.am4>,
>AndyW  <An...@nojunqmail.com> wrote:
>>If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a bit 
>>of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.
>
>I used Primes when a student & working at uni.
>
>>http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html
>
>Oddly enough I have absoltuely no interest in connecting in to one
>ever again as long as I live. I have no feelings other than hatred
>towards them. This is possibly (probably) due to the politics
>and people surrounding them at the establishment I worked for.

I remember a local school district paid something like 30,000 bucks
for a 386 machine from Prime.  IMO they were robbed.

Used it some when I was in college too.  I don't really remember much about it now.  I may have to try out the emulator and see how much I do end up remembering.

David

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:29:36 +0000
AndyW <An...@nojunqmail.com> wrote:

> It is just as awful as the first time I used it. Thankfully PCs were 
> coming in at the time and we switched to them after a couple of years 
> with the prime.... sorry Pr1me, must remember the '1'
> I do recall that their security was appalling and it was an easy
> matter to go 'Up' and 'LD' to find the lecturers' directories and
> then 'Down' to a directory to get the lesson plans and assignments.

ACLs were introduced in 1982 so perhaps the lecturers were not as 
on the ball as they should have been.  I agree that before Primos Rev
19 security didn't exist.  As an operating system when I first used it
in 1975 it was a revelation after punching JCL cards for a CDC6000
(the one in the Science Museum!).  As big a jump as getting SunOs 1.0 in
1983 ;-)

Prime's attitude to corporate security was dire too.  I found a
development machine in Framingham that was on Primenet, and so available
to me from the UK, with an account for everyone in development and
higher management, that had no	 password unless you had found
it, logged in and set a password yourself.  It held a copy of the
source to Primos. "Security" were not interested, so I shrugged and
left it alone.


Mike

On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 3:22:13 AM UTC-5, AndyW wrote:
> If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a bit 
> of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.
> 
> http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html
> 
> Andy

Andy, did you purchase a license to Jim's emulator?

On 31/01/2018 20:17, Daiyu Hurst wrote:
> On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 3:22:13 AM UTC-5, AndyW wrote:
>> If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a bit
>> of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.
>>
>> http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html
>>
>> Andy
> 
> Andy, did you purchase a license to Jim's emulator?

Jim? I must have missed something.

Andy

On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 07:44:13 +0000, AndyW wrote:

> On 31/01/2018 20:17, Daiyu Hurst wrote:
>> On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 3:22:13 AM UTC-5, AndyW wrote:
>>> If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a
>>> bit of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.
>>>
>>> http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html
>>>
>>> Andy
>> 
>> Andy, did you purchase a license to Jim's emulator?
> 
> Jim? I must have missed something.

I think he believes you are offering the telnet service, and that the 
website you are quoting is yours. My understanding is that:

1) You are not Andrew Marlow 
2) Even if you were, there is no evidence that you are offering the 
telnet service at a different domain name
3) Jim Wilcoxson wrote the emulator

Thus, he thinks you should have paid Jim a licence fee before offerimng 
the service on 'your' website.



-- 
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
 http://www.mirrorservice.org

On 01/02/2018 10:09, Bob Eager wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 07:44:13 +0000, AndyW wrote:
> 
>> On 31/01/2018 20:17, Daiyu Hurst wrote:
>>> On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 3:22:13 AM UTC-5, AndyW wrote:
>>>> If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a
>>>> bit of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>
>>> Andy, did you purchase a license to Jim's emulator?
>>
>> Jim? I must have missed something.
> 
> I think he believes you are offering the telnet service, and that the
> website you are quoting is yours. My understanding is that:
> 
> 1) You are not Andrew Marlow
> 2) Even if you were, there is no evidence that you are offering the
> telnet service at a different domain name
> 3) Jim Wilcoxson wrote the emulator
> 
> Thus, he thinks you should have paid Jim a licence fee before offerimng
> the service on 'your' website.

AH.
1) No I am not AndyM, I am AndyW. However is sharing the same name makes 
my jointly liable I ask for Andrew Carnegie to be taken into account as 
we share the same name, birthplace and some relatives. Sadly we don't 
share the same money.
2) I am not offering the service. I am providing a link to the link to 
the service that is hosted by Jim
3) Done some googling, interesting guy.

Does Jim even sell licenses? I can't find any mention of selling 
licenses even though I seriously doubt that publishing a link to a link 
to Jim's own telnet server would warrant a license in any country in the 
world.

Andy(W not M) :-)

Note that "he" refers to Daiyu Hurst and not Jim Wilcoxson in the post to which 
you replied. It is not terribly outrageous that a random Usenet poster might fail 
to recognize that a link on your web site was to an off-site location.

John Savard

On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 1:06:47 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> Note that "he" refers to Daiyu Hurst and not Jim Wilcoxson in the post to which 
> you replied. It is not terribly outrageous that a random Usenet poster might fail 
> to recognize that a link on your web site was to an off-site location.
> 
> John Savard

yeah thanks folks.

On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 2:31:27 AM UTC-5, AndyW wrote:
> On 01/02/2018 10:09, Bob Eager wrote:
> > On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 07:44:13 +0000, AndyW wrote:
> > 
> >> On 31/01/2018 20:17, Daiyu Hurst wrote:
> >>> On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 3:22:13 AM UTC-5, AndyW wrote:
> >>>> If anyone out there has ever used a Pr1me minicomputer and fancies a
> >>>> bit of nostalgia then there is a telnet emulator you can play with.
> >>>>
> >>>> http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk/personal/prime.html
> >>>>
> >>>> Andy
> >>>
> >>> Andy, did you purchase a license to Jim's emulator?
> >>
> >> Jim? I must have missed something.
> > 
> > I think he believes you are offering the telnet service, and that the
> > website you are quoting is yours. My understanding is that:
> > 
> > 1) You are not Andrew Marlow
> > 2) Even if you were, there is no evidence that you are offering the
> > telnet service at a different domain name
> > 3) Jim Wilcoxson wrote the emulator
> > 
> > Thus, he thinks you should have paid Jim a licence fee before offerimng
> > the service on 'your' website.
> 
> AH.
> 1) No I am not AndyM, I am AndyW. However is sharing the same name makes 
> my jointly liable I ask for Andrew Carnegie to be taken into account as 
> we share the same name, birthplace and some relatives. Sadly we don't 
> share the same money.
> 2) I am not offering the service. I am providing a link to the link to 
> the service that is hosted by Jim
> 3) Done some googling, interesting guy.
> 
> Does Jim even sell licenses? I can't find any mention of selling 
> licenses even though I seriously doubt that publishing a link to a link 
> to Jim's own telnet server would warrant a license in any country in the 
> world.
> 
> Andy(W not M) :-)

If you have to ask how much something costs, you can't generally afford it.
Having known Jim and having been helpful in developing the emulator,
I nonetheless have never asked for a license. But since the emulator has at
least one paid customer, unless the license with that sole customer precludes licensing it to others, I would be surprised if a license
couldn't be obtained. I suspect it would be a monthly- or yearly- thing,
with rights to use ending with the end of the support contract.

But maybe not. Next time I have five figures in the bank, I intend to ask.